SUV puts Lamborghini at crossroads

Camera IconLamborghini will continue making supercars for the foreseeable future.

Lamborghini is at a tipping point, poised to launch its first SUV in Australia within three months and also preparing to introduce hybrids.

At the same time, it has to maintain its core sports-car models — Huracan and Aventador — while balancing production levels with a near-$1 billion factory expansion purely to cope with the new Urus SUV.

The expansion will allow the Italian car maker — owned by Audi since 1998 — to double annual production to about 7000 units.

Lamborghini obviously places a lot of faith in the success of its first SUV which has been vindicated, in part, by the booming global orders for the as-yet unavailable wagon.

But though the rosy outlook augurs well for the Italian company, given it has pre-Audi history of bouts of insolvency and multiple owners, its new Asia Pacific chief executive Matteo Ortenzi has a cautious view.

“We doubled the size of our plant (to 160,000sqm) to make way for the Urus,” he said.

“That was a huge step. It is too early now — from an investment point of view — to think of what will be the next model. In the future, five to 10 years, maybe it would be time for Lamborghini to have a fourth model.

“But who is to say what model would be correct for the market in the future? Things could change.”

He dismissed a smaller SUV on the basis there were concerns about the future of the SUV trend and the huge capital expense needed to develop and make such.

But there are other possibilities.

Camera IconMatteo Ortenzi

Mr Ortenzi said electric vehicles would come to Lamborghini “because it’s a clear trend” but he said it wouldn’t happen in the short term.

“We will be able, in the future, to provide electrification of some kind without compromising performance. But not yet, because it means we will have to compromise on performance, so we won’t do it,” he said. “We will use the right technology at the right time.”

He said there were electric vehicles faster than a Lamborghini in acceleration, more powerful and with a faster top speed.

“Then we’ll go on the racetrack. Our customer is driving the Lamborghini and there is a faster EV and after a few laps the EV has to stop (as its batteries expire) and the Lamborghini keeps going for another half an hour,” he said.

Aside from the Huracan and Aventador, Lamborghini currently has the limited- edition Huracan Performante Spyder on the market and is seeing the last deliveries of its big sister, the Aventador Centenario.

Mr Ortenzi said the next step was the SVJ version of the Aventador, the car which last month handed Lamborghini the Nurburgring lap record.

“That record is a positive because it is a demonstration that what we are doing is effective,” he said. “We are a sports-car producer. The Urus is not an SUV — it is a sports car with the body of an SUV.

“The job we have to do is to let the customer drive the Urus. It’s a very different car but we have the same customer base.”